With a title like “Darby and the Dead,” expectations are put into place for a horror extravaganza. It comes with some surprise to learn that the screenplay (by Becca Greene) isn’t interested at all in summoning fears, instead going the “Mean Girl” route with this tale of a high schooler and her battle with popularity, also dealing with the deceased as a medium. It’s a bizarre mashing of subgenres, but teen cinema wins out in the picture, which is mostly interested in rehashing adolescent woes concerning relationships and self-esteem challenges, occasionally getting into issues with the other side. Two very bright performances from Riele Downs and Auli’i Cravalho offer plenty of charm and energy to the feature, but the sameness of “Darby and the Dead” prevents it from doing something interesting with life and death, with the story gradually sinking back into predictability after a lively opening act. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Ravi Kapoor hopes to bring some fun to the screen with “Four Samosas,” offering a celebration of comedy, music, and South Asian culture with the little picture, which tries very hard to please. It’s a heist movie in a way, but mostly interested in silliness with broad characters, and the endeavor is clearly influenced by the works of Wes Anderson and Jared Hess, offering a dry, stylized approach to goofballery. “Four Samosas” doesn’t have enough creative gas to get to the finish line, but Kapoor is dedicated to delivering a charming story of friends going to extremes to solve their problems, including wounded hearts. And there’s a fresh, engaging cast here that’s ready to play with the material, offering bright performances and decent timing in this somewhat strange but likable study of mistakes and community peculiarities. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As the world waits for another installment of the “Godzilla vs. Kong” series (due in 2024), superfans of giant monster movies are offered something to tide themselves over with “Troll,” a Norwegian production looking to merge some kaiju action with local folklore. There’s also a disaster film element to the endeavor, with director Roar Uthaug (who previously helmed the “Tomb Raider” reboot) returning to the genre after 2015’s “The Wave,” bringing more death and destruction to the citizens of Norway. Screenwriter Espen Aukan conjures a simple plan of mayhem featuring a building-sized troll on the loose, hammering out basic characterizations to carry the human perspective while Uthaug deals with visual effects and scenes of mayhem. “Troll” is meant to easily play all over the world, delivering broad strokes and big threats, and it connects as intended. It’s not quite up to supermonster standards, but the viewing experience is breezy while also utilizing local culture and fairy tale history to complicate a dire situation of survival. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There was once a time when one had to wait years between adaptations of “Pinocchio,” with the author Carlo Collodi’s 1883 book a popular choice for producers looking to do something with world-famous public domain material. This year, mere months separate the releases, with Disney taking another swing at the concept with a September release directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks. It was more of a remake, giving the company’s 1940 animated endeavor a live-action update, but co-writer/co-director Guillermo del Toro is not interested in making the same movie as everyone else. He’s gone back to the darkness of Collodi’s imagination, reworking a story of magic and curiosity into a stop-motion animated study of pre-WWII Italy, with the eponymous wooden puppet facing the rise of fascism while also handling his dream of becoming a real boy. I’ve seen many takes on “Pinocchio” over the years, but this is the first version to feature a cameo by Mussolini, with del Toro, co-director Mark Gustafson, and co-writer Patrick McHale putting in the effort to make this version of “Pinocchio” their own. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the onslaught of holiday-themed entertainment this year, there’s “Christmas with the Campbells,” which has the appearance of a typical Hallmark Channel distraction for viewers who can’t get enough of the yuletide spirit or remain incapacitated in front of a television due to the consumption of too much egg nog. However, it’s not just another anodyne offering of cheer and romance, but something approaching a mild parody of such small screen comfort food. Screenwriters Barbara Kymlicka, Dan Lagana, and Vince Vaughn (who co-produces with Peter Billingsley) hope to add a streak of naughtiness to the proceedings, getting rascally with this take on small town Christmas experiences and relationship tentativeness. “Christmas with the Campbells” is a little too permissive with improvisation and crudeness, but there are laughs to be found in this bizarre mix of earnestness and silliness, and the cast comes ready to play. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1997's "Ravage" attempts to replicate the experience of watching a gritty Hollywood thriller with shot-on-video technology. It's an ambitious movie from co-writer/director Ronnie Sortor ("Sinistre"), who hopes to bring a little Michael Mann energy to what's basically a backyard bloodbath, arranging a loose revenge story to help inspire a steady display of shootouts and stunts, hoping to win viewers over with sheer violence. Sortor has the vision but not the execution with "Ravage," which can't outrun its amateur elements and limited resources. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Specialists in fetish videos for a secretive mail-order audience, W.A.V.E. Productions doesn't necessarily want to be known as cheaply made entertainment for viewers with specific arousal needs. They hope to achieve some level of storytelling competency with their efforts, and director Gary Whitson (who founded the company) attempts to offer something approaching a chiller with 1991's "Dead North." There's a killer on the loose and a collection of couples and friends trying to enjoy themselves in the woods, but the slasher-y set-up doesn't actually represent the viewing experience. Whitson is more interested in constructing a soap opera featuring the ways of cheaters and seducers, doing so in the most painfully drawn-out manner possible with limiting shot-on-video production achievements. It's sold as something menacing, but "Dead North" quickly becomes a grand test of patience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

No matter what type of business "Hearts Beat Loud" does with Blu-ray sales, the film is guaranteed to find its audience one way or another. It's a sensitive endeavor about the communicative aspects of musicianship and songwriting, and it's similar to smaller movies like "Once" and "Sing Street," which also mixed troubled souls with the power of performance. The bonus here is that while constructed out of familiar working parts, "Hearts Beat Loud" is a lovely picture unafraid to touch on real emotions, using music to explore the fears of people on the precipice of enormous life changes. Co- writer/director Brett Haley has a terrific cast to help him achieve such tricky vulnerabilities, and for those who crave the musical arts, the feature delivers a rich sense of craftsmanship and passion behind the creation of songs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Throughout his career, actor Leland Orser hasn't made much of an impression. He was hit with typecasting for a long time, always the go-to guy to play twitchy, screechy types on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He's been wallpaper as well, playing one of the background characters in the "Taken" trilogy. "Faults" is the first truly substantial Leland Orser performance I've seen, asking more of the man than other productions would, and he's up for the challenge, providing a riveting depiction of frayed respectability and financial desperation colliding with professional responsibility. "Faults" is lucky to have such an unusual presence, as the rest of Riley Stearns's directorial debut tends to deflate when he's not around. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Attempting to steer away from the controversies that pursued his installment of the “Star Wars” saga, 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” writer/director Rian Johnson went to work on a smaller movie meant to return him to filmmaking basics, offering a murder mystery in 2019’s “Knives Out.” He collected a large cast and a twisty plot, but also retained much of his habitual impishness, aiming to be clever with an assortment of red herrings and quips, while star Daniel Craig happily took his position as a southern-fried master detective dealing with the deceptive ways of potential suspects. “Knives Out” had its limitations when it came to providing an entertaining ride, and it made a lot of money, inspiring Johnson and Craig to return to duty for “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” which reunites with Benoit Blanc and his dealings with untrustworthy types, only this time, Johnson is more relaxed, diluting the primary puzzle of the endeavor with stabs at humor that largely fall flat, and writing that doesn’t welcome audience participation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Don Hall has been on an interesting creative winning streak, working his way around impressive Disney Animation achievements such as “Winnie the Pooh,” “Big Hero 6,” “Moana,” and “Raya and the Last Dragon.” He teams with writer/co-director Qui Nguyen for “Strange World,” which creates a journey to a special universe inspired by pulp magazines and fantasy novels, most notably the works of author Jules Verne. Hall and Nguyen manufacture a vivid viewing experience with “Strange World,” which features gorgeous animation and fascinating designs for otherworldly creatures and environments. It’s superb eye-candy, but there’s a lot more to Nguyen’s screenplay, which offers a graceful understanding of environmental issues and family relationships between adventure sequences that deliver impressive scale for big screen enjoyment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Luca Guadagnino made a big impression on the cinematic scene with 2017’s “Call Me By Your Name,” finding ways to make an atmospheric, often intensely intimate movie about love. He followed his greatest critical and commercial success with a remake of “Suspiria,” exploring extreme genre darkness with an artful and excessively long take on the Dario Argento masterpiece. For “Bones and All,” the helmer hopes to combine his last two pictures into one epic concerning the fragile hearts of cannibals trying to feed and find themselves as they cross the American Midwest. It’s an adaptation of a novel by Camille DeAngelis, with screenwriter David Kajganich challenged to create a sincere examination of romantic chemistry while still maintaining a firm understanding of the horror the main characters create. “Bones and All” is a mixed bag with an indulgent run time, but it does offer some potent grisliness and feelings, with Guadagnino looking to transform the material into something quite serious while it leans toward “Twilight”-ness at times. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Devotion” is based on the true story of naval officer Jesse L. Brown, a black man who fought for his chance to join an aviation program, fulfilling his dream of flight. The feature is an adaptation of a 2017 book by Adam Makos, given a Hollywood makeover by screenwriters Jake Crane and Jonathan A. Stewart, who work to give a story of partnership and determination a certain slickness to help reach a wide audience. It’s a war film but also something tender, pulling some focus off Brown’s life story to understand his place in the military and his wingman relationship with Tom Hudner, mixing such intimacies with the horrors of the Korean War. “Devotion” doesn’t always choose subtlety, which diminishes some of its lasting impact, but it has its heart in the right place, aiming to share a study of honor and sacrifice from an underserved time in history. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Fantasy Football” offers one of the stranger concepts in recent memory, offering a tale about a teenager capable of controlling her father on the football field via a video game, giving him the NFL advantage of his life. There’s some type of magic happening in the feature, but the production isn’t focused on making logic issues work. It’s simply out to entertain with a healthy serving of oddity, and those who can mentally get around the premise and the many questions it inspires are offered a mild but reasonably charming family film. “Fantasy Football” doesn’t contain many surprises, but there’s a certain spirit to the endeavor that’s engaging, especially when it deals with gaming control and time management. Formula rules here, leaving the overall picture to predictability, but the weirdness of it all isn’t unappealing, just tiring as the effort moves into a labored third act. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s important to understand that the documentary “Good Night Oppy” is co-produced by Amblin Entertainment, the Steven Spielberg co-founded company that’s been involved in movies with mass appeal for decades. This is no nuts-and-bolts examination of the space program, but a crowd-pleasing overview of the Opportunity rover which was initially set to explore Mars for 90 days, but managed to hang on for 15 years, offering NASA an extraordinary opportunity to study the Red Planet in detail, providing the team with various challenges to keep “Oppy” on the move as the years passed. Director Ryan White (“Ask Dr. Ruth,” “The Case Against 8”) is working to turn the endeavor into a suspenseful, emotional viewing experience, and he goes big with “Good Night Oppy,” which provides stunning, big-budget (for a documentary) visuals and a rich sense of character from the gathered interviewees, who are charged up to discuss their connection to Opportunity. This enthusiasm is laid on fairly thick in the feature, pushing the effort into a few manipulative moments, but the core sense of wonder and inspiration remains potent. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Steven Spielberg made his musical dreams come true in 2021’s “West Side Story,” taking command of a sweeping Broadway epic that showcased a revitalized filmmaker who’s still the tops when it comes to delivering a cinematic ballet. Spielberg looks to retreat from big screen electricity with “The Fabelmans,” which is meant to be his most personal work, turning (co-scripting with Tony Kushner) his formative years into a drama about family, dreams, and the disappointments that define our lives as we get older. The material is close to Spielberg, possibly a recreation of his most painful moments, but such intimacy isn’t easily managed by the helmer. “The Fabelmans” is an uneasy blend of sugared and sour memories, forcing the production to locate a special tonal balance that helps viewers to understand the lead character’s turbulent emotional ride. Spielberg has a lot of feelings to sort through, but his editorial instinct is dulled, making for a labored, episodic endeavor that doesn’t possess his usual moviemaking flow. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2012, Steve Guttenberg released a memoir, with "The Guttenberg Bible" detailing his quest to become a working actor in Hollywood, with dreams of achieving stardom. The book is attentive to the lean years of the 1970s, and his rise to screen prominence in the 1980s, but information beyond that isn't available, with Guttenberg trying to end on a slightly happier note of experience and fame. He made his mark with hits such as "Police Academy," "Cocoon," and "Three Men and a Baby," and he shares the strange ride of success, with particular attention to monetary offers, showing little shame when it came time to accept money gigs during his most in-demand years. The 1990s were less kind to Guttenberg, with 1990's "Don't Tell Her It's Me" (also known as "The Boyfriend School") a good example of a thespian chasing a paycheck instead of paying close attention to the material. Guttenberg (reportedly paid a million dollars to commit to the project) joins Shelley Long and Jami Gertz in an adaptation of a Sarah Bird novel (the author takes on screenwriting duties), working to conjure some kind of romantic comedy magic with an idiotic plot that's often far too cruel to register any warmth. That Guttenberg, or anyone, agreed to take part in this hopeless endeavor is amazing, triggering more post-screening conversation than the movie itself. Read the review at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director William Sachs is quick to remind fans of 1977's "The Incredible Melting Man" that the final cut of the feature doesn't represent his original vision. Sachs was hoping to create a comedic take on Atomic Age horror/sci-fi offerings, looking to pants a serious subgenre from the 1950s with a goofy approach from the 1970s. The helmer's vision was denied by studio executives, who wanted a more serious take on the birth of a screen monster, ordering reshoots to help transform a deliberately exaggerated effort into a more sinister one. "The Incredible Melting Man" is a confusing movie to watch due to this tinkering, but it doesn't seem to work in its original form either, as Sachs doesn't have the greatest imagination for anything he's attempting here, and his sense of pacing is abysmal, slowing the picture to a crawl, which does nothing to help build suspense. A man melts, no doubt, but he often takes forever to do so. Read the review at Blu-ray.com

From the depths of drive-in cinema comes 1973's "Terror Circus" (also known as "Nightmare Circus"), which is credited to director Alan Rudolph. Every career has to start somewhere, and the "Trouble in Mind," "The Moderns," and "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" helmer gets some early time behind the camera with this offering of Z-grade schlock. A true artist touch isn't present in the picture, which is mostly focused on the prolonged suffering of women, using the cover of a monster and missing persons movie to deliver some screen sadism for curious viewers. Those expecting something more substantial are left with a thin viewing experience that features no suspense or horror. It's crude exploitation without excitement. Read the review at Blu-ray.com

"Superior" opens with a visit to a crime scene, but the picture isn't committed to exploring the details of violence. Co-writer/director Erin Vassilopoulos is more invested in the story of twin sisters reuniting after a lengthy period of estrangement, examining the thawing ice between siblings who don't fully understand each other. "Superior" is really two stories trying to become one, but Vassilopoulos can't connect the different sides of the movie, making the human elements of the feature far more interesting than any thriller offerings. Read the review at Blu-ray.com